subtle lighting, and cosmetic dentistry. There was a gulf between them in attitude. You could see it in Gabrielle’s almond eyes and in her high cheekbones, you could see it in the way she held her head. She was a predator. In one of the studio photographs, taken when she’d been an aspiring model, she gazed straight into the lens while her tongue peeped out and touched her upper lip. This was a woman savouring power, the power to stop a man in his tracks and make him do her bidding.
Hannah had always lacked that confidence. She could never tease men into watching her every move and the thought of screwing her way to the top made her gorge rise. Anything that she achieved in her career would be thanks to her own efforts. The wild life hadn’t been kind to Gabrielle in the long run. Easy to imagine that she had acquired the dangerous habit of thinking herself irresistible and that in the end it had cost her life. If the two of them had ever met, they’d have had nothing in common. Probably loathed each other on sight. They weren’t sisters at all — yet Hannah could never quite rid her mind of the notion that fate had forged a bond between them. Victim and detective, thrown together by sudden death.
The door swung open, rocking on its hinges as Les Bryant strode in. As usual, he dropped into a chair without being asked. The little discourtesies were a habit, gestures to make the point that she might be in charge, but he had no intention of tugging his forelock to her. Fair enough, as long as he stayed on-side.
‘Nice bit of stuff,’ he muttered with a nod at the photographs.
‘Not when I saw her,’ Hannah said, sliding out of a plastic wallet a set of photographs taken at the post- mortem and shuffling them on to the desk. The corpse’s face was scarcely recognisable, the lovely hair matted with blood.
He winced at the wounds on the swollen face. ‘Vicious bastard. If Gilpin did kill her, what happened to him was poetic justice.’
‘And if he didn’t, then he’s another victim.’
‘You’re not suggesting he was thrown into the ravine?’
‘We never found a scrap of evidence that suggested his death was anything other than an accident. Suicide was an outside bet, so was murder. But the verdict at the inquest was accidental death and Ben Kind didn’t disagree. He wondered if Barrie might have had a close encounter with whoever had killed Gabrielle. There were traces of her blood on his hand and sleeve…maybe he’d come across the body during a nocturnal ramble and fallen to his death while he was running away in panic.’
‘Speculation,’ Bryant said.
‘Yeah, Ben had to admit he was pissing in the wind. Apart from any other consideration, Barrie was a strong, fit young man. Even if he’d stumbled across someone armed with an axe, he’d have had a good chance of showing him a clean pair of heels. But if Barrie was set up, we never came close to showing who did it, or how. We couldn’t argue against the decision to run down the inquiry.’
‘So what’s changed? Yesterday’s phone call doesn’t take us too far.’
Us. At least he was thinking as a team member, not a devil’s advocate whose first priority was to scoff at any fresh initiative. ‘All I’m doing is taking a second glance. Nothing more. I can’t justify devoting too much resource to something as nebulous as the message that Maggie took.’
Les Bryant leaned back in his chair. ‘Time to look at the case from a different angle, then?’
‘I think so.’ Hannah pointed to the photographs. ‘Starting with the victim.’
‘How much do you know about her?’
‘Not a lot.’ Hannah sighed. ‘Born and raised in the East End. Home a tower block, mother an occasional prostitute. She was one of four kids with three different dads. Before her tenth birthday, she was bunking off school. At fifteen she moved out and no one kept in touch. She seems to have followed a boyfriend up to Yorkshire.’
‘The Promised Land,’ Bryant said in his broadest West Riding accent.
‘If you say so. She modelled a bit, tried a little acting. She’d ditched the boyfriend early on and he went back to London. We checked and he died of a drugs overdose a year before Gabrielle was killed. She mixed in bad company. The old story, plenty of men were keen to take a pretty girl to bed in exchange for a slap-up dinner and a few quid to help with the rent.’
Les Bryant plucked at a hair growing from his nostril. ‘My daughter wanted to be an actress. Christ, the day she signed up with an agency, I hit the roof, but would she listen? They ripped her off something rotten. At least she finished up with an Oscar.’
‘Really?’ Hannah was startled.
‘Yeah,’ he said, deadpan, ‘while she was resting, she took a job as a dental hygienist in Batley. Finished up marrying the dentist. Oscar Padgett.’
She laughed. ‘There are worse fates.’
‘Obviously you’ve never been to Batley.’ He saw her glance at the post-mortem photographs. ‘Matter of fact, I spoke to Jenny on the phone only last night, but you know something? It’s six months since I last saw her face to face. Kids, bloody hell. You have any?’
His conversational swerves kept catching her on the back foot. She was starting to like the crusty old bugger, but she’d hate to be interrogated by him.
‘Never got round to it.’
He puffed out his cheeks. ‘Not bothered about the ticking clock?’
She shrugged and said, ‘Neither of us is exactly desperate to start a family.’
Bryant said, ‘Take it from me, there are more important things than the job.’
‘Actually, I worked that out a while back.’
‘Well, then.’ His dour features were expressionless. Challenging her to get uptight, but she wouldn’t be provoked.
‘We were talking about Gabrielle.’ She cleared her throat. ‘While she was in Leeds, she met up with Natasha Litvinov. Tash Litvinov, as she was known. They had plenty in common, both struggling for a break.’
‘Many are called, but few are chosen.’ Bryant grunted. ‘I told my Jenny, but would she listen?’
‘Both of them became disillusioned, they decided to start again. Tash came up to this neck of the woods, met a rich man and settled down. Gabrielle wanted to get right away. She fancied trying her luck in the States.’
‘Hollywood?’
‘She never seems to have made it beyond Las Vegas. For a couple of years she lived with a croupier from one of the casinos. Most of the time she spent as a waitress, serving free booze to gamblers to keep them at the tables or the slot machines. The pay was nothing special, but a pretty girl can make a good living out of tips from the punters.’
‘Why come back to England?’
‘According to Tash, her relationship had broken up and she was getting homesick. She’d earned a few quid and had this idea of travelling around Europe. Britain was her first stop.’
‘And her last.’
‘Uh-huh. She’d only been back a week when she turned up on her old mate’s doorstep. Tash had done well for herself, she’d married a property developer called Dumelow. He bought a mansion in Brackdale and played the local squire. After all those auditions, she finally landed the part of lady of the manor.’
‘How thrilled was Tash to see a face from the past? A reminder of the dark days, before she met her sugar daddy?’
‘She told us she was thrilled to have someone around she could gossip to about the past. She does her best, but the truth is, she doesn’t exactly have a lot in common with the good folk of Brackdale. Though she did introduce her friend to an odd-job man who worked on the estate.’
‘Don’t tell me. Barrie Gilpin.’
‘Got it in one. Barrie took a shine to Gabrielle from the moment he set eyes on her. He kept turning up at the pub in the village where she’d taken a room. According to the landlord, he was a bit of a nuisance. Constantly offering to buy her a drink, not taking no for an answer.’
‘Did she show him up in public? Take the piss?’
‘As far as we could establish, she humoured him, let him buy her the occasional orange juice.’
Bryant groaned. ‘You can’t help wondering if it would have been safer to be rude. He might have felt encouraged. Stalkers are like that. They take the slightest pleasantry as a sign of lust.’
‘Men are like that, never mind stalkers.’
‘You know what I mean.’
